Monday, May 26, 2014

Sunday brought another day of great racing; with a similar schedule. Practice yielded a 1:40.6; which was 4th of the PTE class but I knew their was more time in the car and wasn't worried. 2 hours later in qualifying I pushed hard and my best lap of 1:38.512 would put me on pole! The top was damn tight; with 2nd being .08 behind me and the top four separated by just .355!
Today's race would be a rolling start. And Jason and I would again be on the front row; with him qualifying P2. We discussed a strategy of slow into T1 and me guarding the inside of the track; with him holding close to me so nobody could squeeze through. We wanted to keep everyone else behind, and let us duke out P1.
The strategy worked pretty damn well actually. With the drop of the green, the Miatas (pretty much everybody but me is in a PTE Miata) got a bit of a jump thx to their bigger motors, but I was able to make that up braking late into T1 thanks to my lower weight. T1 and T2 went just as planned - and I was full out through T3 and was able to pull a bit of a gap. T4 we were still 2-wide and with T5 Jason getting picked a little and I was able to pull a bit of a gap that I exercised by using all of T6 and checked out in the lead! T6 is where both the videos below end - with both a forward-facing and rearward-facing camera. Pretty neat stuff; there's a lot going on in those 40 or so seconds!
By the end of lap #1, I had about a 4-6 car lead with everyone still duking it out for position behind me. I decided to take care of the tires a bit, as yesterday things got really greasy. I think this strategy call was the incorrect call, as it let the competition stay close. A few laps in, I took a bad line into T6 and pretty much lost all of my lead. I was now forced into some defensive driving lines and into similar issues as Saturday where I'm at a bit of a disadvantage in traffic with the lower torque motor. In the end there was some terrific driving in class, specially with the top 4 of us. I had a terrific weekend and had a lot of fun. It's great to hop in a car you've never seen or driven before and immediately be competitive. Not only that; I put the car on the front-row of qualifying each day and run under the old track record! Huge thanks to Sam and Myers Motorsports for the car prep.